#and I post about names and stuff like I did for Hugo

[sergle]

I hope you guys like it when I talk about Hugo bc it's going to get 10x worse when I eventually get him a baby sibling

[tangledbea]

Varian and the Seven Kingdoms Consolidation of Info

Requested by anon

This is going to be a consolidation of all the official Vat7K stuff I have on my blog, including copy/pasting of posts Kay Ritter and Anna Lencioni have posted, and to a lesser extent, things I’ve posted with insider knowledge I had before Kay ever released their notes. Alexa Bosy was also involved in the project.*

*Please note that all these asks were sent when Kay was still going by Kait and was still using she/her pronouns. I have edited to reflect their preferred name and pronouns when referencing them, but did not edit the content of the original asks.

The Cast

Via Kay: Here is some higher-res art of that initial, old line-up. These are some of the character page descriptions we gave when we presented “Varian and the Seven Kingdoms!” I had to shut of my asks because I’m just getting slammed every day, so I’m sorry if I don’t get back to any of you!! I appreciate all the enthusiasm, though! ; - ; Please enjoy and keep creating!!! (Also enjoy some Anna sketches- she designed Varian’s cousins and they’re dang cute!)

The Design

Via Kay: Some character design/ costume concept art for a fan project me and Anna dreamed up. It was a little spinoff comic about Varian continuing his adventures in alchemy through the seven kingdoms in order to learn the seven alchemical laws and attain forbidden knowledges. New characters we wanted to play with were Varian’s mom, who design-wise was a in flux, since we only had one reference image to go off of…but we really wanted to match her aesthetic to Varian/ that of a field researcher. We always imagined her as being a lot like Varian! Tried to develop some motifs between the other characters (L-R: Hugo, Donella, and Donella’s muscle-man) to make them look like the evil pack they were. Hugo was a sneaky artificer who conned the wealthy and worked for Donella: Varian’s mother’s former research partner. We also had Yong and Princess Nuru- who were some new friends that Varian would meet on his journey! And of course, Prometheus, a farm donkey Quirin gifted to Varian before he left Corona. (Not quite a Maximus…but, hey!) 

Sample Pages

Rough layout by Anna Line cleanup by Alexa Ink/color by Kay

Beat Boards

Via Kay: Here are some old beat boards Anna and I did when we were making this fan-baby!

The first few explored Varian meeting Yong and making his first friend, completing the first trial of the seven kingdoms. In the nighttime one- Anna had a cool idea that Princess Nuru’s dress was an active star chart and that she could act as the group navigator, using it to guide them. The last few were just some group interactions and Varian coming face to face with his mother.The super short story is: we imagined each of the seven kingdoms would teach one of the seven alchemical stages of transformation and reveal a totem. With all seven totems acquired, Varian would be able to use them to reunite with his long-lost mother (we’d called her Ulla) who was trapped somewhere unreachable by her former partner, Donella, long ago. Donella was after the totems as well to prevent Ulla’s release and sent Hugo to collect them as a double-agent within the group. Hugo would later betray Donella in service of helping Varian reach Ulla. We viewed Hugo and Varian’s relationship evolving from a sort of Pinocchio/ Lampwick situation (literally what that drawing is from) to that of an equal one. In a way, their bond repaired the partnership that frayed between Ulla and Donella.

Notes

Anon Ask: Kait! Appreciate the infodump (I'm the currently-Tumblr-less user w the bombardment of Q's earlier) & I'm stoked that you've given us your blessing to use the concept!:P Got more random Q’s, if you’re up for it! Was the comic outfit Varian’s final, or the other designs would’ve been used too (same w Ulla’s 2 designs)? 7 trials ideas, & 7 kingdoms’ names? How much time after TTS would this be? & finally, was Varian planning on actually RIDING that donkey, or would he pull a caravan(?)thing?xD -GC

Kay’s Answer: The outfits were still in flux- the comic was a representation of our first draft and the other designs came later (including Hugo’s upgrade, Donella, etc.) The red dress Ulla was a flashback type of look whereas the teal one is more like…how Varian would have found her. You know I actually found some screenshots of the ol’ docs we wrote using the 7 alchemical stages to mirror the seven kingdoms. We tried to find an alchemical story component, a magical story component, and a figurative/character story component for each! We never actually named the kingdoms and we also crafted a lot of them before they existed canonically in the show (I think there’s an episode of RTA where Raps competes against princesses from the seven kingdoms and they’re mentioned there)…so just know it’s not accurate to that at all, haha.

But here! These are very note-to-self format…so…apologies lol...

Via Anna: I don’t wanna clutter my main tumblr page but here was the rough outline Kait and I wrote for our fan comic “Varian and the Seven Kingdoms!” Just a reminder that this is totally unofficial, just fan stuff. Would have been fun, wish we could have done it even just recreationally!! Hope you all can use this however you want and continue to enjoy it 🖤

Questions and Answers

Anon Ask: Hello Kait! I would like to know more about Hugo’s past. Your friend mentioned that Hugo is an orphan. Where did Hugo grow up? So, where will he go after betraying Donella?  Does he have a permanent place of residence? 

Kay’s Answer: I’m trying to recall what Anna said, but he definitely grew up an orphan. From what I can remember, the kingdom he grew up in had a very highly divided class system and Hugo was determined to find a way not to live on scraps. And not just that, but to like…get back at, take advantage of as many rich idiots as possible. He’s Robin Hood robbing the rich to feed himself. Someone here called him a champagne-taste kind of guy and that’s exactly right.

He’s manipulative, so he’s probably well ahead of developing technologies and other things for the rich people who invest in him. He’d probably just withhold the best stuff for himself and do what he needed to stay in his patrons’ good graces. And he’d steal whatever they didn’t give him and never get caught.  (I think Anna designed like a motorized bike or something for him once…he’s literally the cool guy with a car. He’d totally keep something like that all for himself.)

Donella and her gang offered protection more than anything…so he offers most of his work to her first. Including his sneakier services. That’s how he ends up being the one to go after Varian. It’s probably also how (in our wildest dreams) we imagined him possibly having pulled a job (and likely conned) Eugene back in his Rider days. Pulled a Rider on a Rider as a sneaky kid.

All of this is also why he’d switch alliances on Donella when it felt right to do so. Hugo has a wild compass but he follows it in service of himself pretty much always. Becoming close to Varian kinda changes that streak in him. He’d probably hang out with Varian whenever everything blew over, maybe settle back down in Corona. Meet this princess everyone keeps talking about. Wait…Rider lives in a CASTLE NOW?!

~*~*~

Anon Ask: Kait! Varian and the seven kingdoms is giving me so much life during quarantine bless your heart for all this :’) I have a question, what kind of life did our sweet boy Yong live? Was he an orphan too? Or did Varian promise his parents/guardian he’d take care of him? After they finish their adventure does Varian take Yong under his wing so he stops blowing stuff up and causing fires? 

Kay’s Answer: I love Yong, I think everyone loves Yong, I think Yong’s parents and family (which I always imagined as being very big) all love Yong. But I think they are all very tired and very grateful that he has made a friend who is willing to take him on as a mentee. I imagine he’s gone through a few. (Very Young Hercules lol.)

~*~*~

Anon Ask: This is a question on the 7 kingdoms au thing. When Ulla was researching in the Dark Kingdom, was this before or after it was abandoned? It was likely before it was abandoned but I'm just not sure. Also, this is probably more of a question for Kritterart, but since she made that post about getting too many asks I decided to ask that question to you. 😅 

My Answer: Yeah, I have absolutely no idea how to answer that. Seeing as how the Dark Kingdom was on the seven kingdoms list in the comic, I have to guess that they hadn’t yet developed in the series that the kingdom had been abandoned, but that’s just my guess. 

Kay’s Reply: (We were thinking it was before…and also where she met Quirin, fell in love with him! Just before they moved to Corona- the place where the final trial/totem were. She paused her research to have a family, that bummed Donella out, Quirin let her go after Varian was born, and she never came back.)

~*~*~

Anon Ask:  If VAT7K ever became canon, would Varian and Hugo been an actual couple? Making Varian bi? 

My Answer: Yes.

Well.

Okay, I don’t know for a fact that they’d have been a couple or endgame, however, I was talking to Kait about it a long time ago and she told me that Vat7K would confirm that Varian is bi (and she was referring to Hugo).

An Important note from Kay

I’m getting way more 7K questions than I have time or any real authority to answer considering there is no ACTUAL CONTENT to reference lol, but I just wanna let you guys know how much I appreciate them all! I’m sorry if I don’t answer your question. I also just don’t want my art tumblr to turn into a huge Q&A, haha.We’ve been loving all the fanart and support and curiosity. It’s amazing! That said- 7K and its dealings, characters are NOT CANON. So if it’s not for you, that’s so totally okay. You’re super valid. We made it for you guys, but it’s yours to take what you like from it and change what you don’t when you use it (or don’t) to tell your own story! We just wanted to help Varian’s story continue, like many of you! So whatever you love or don’t love, don’t be afraid to create based on it!!! We love it all. You guys are the best! Please have fun!!!!

[olderthannetfic]

The only thing I'd noticed about XJZ in recent years was the Cait Corraine bullshit and then a small reaction on reddit about the Awards fuckery with Hugo and China or something. Seeing this weird reaction to this one post is confusing. How did they even find it? ONTF doesn't even tag any of her stuff, it's not like you'd randomly stumble across it. So either they are really set on finding random tumblrs mentioning them, OR something that'd be kinda fucked up and gross, a random follower of theirs decided to send them the link, fully knowing that it could be upsetting.

I mean, we're a collective of nosy anon fuckers who don't wanna put our names to our opinions. But that also means that once we go back to our blogs we're done. Pro-tip to the potential next person who finds themselves being a topic on here, we cycle through you pretty frequently: Just go anon and link the post talking shit about you, and then argue with them anon style. It's a lot more entertaining, and less risky.

--

[tomwaterbabies]

I hope the surgery went well and recovery goes smoothly!!! You asked for asks and I saw you have some robo Varian art that's been eating my brain for a few days now. I guess not technically a question but I'd love to hear more about that au if you wanna ramble 👉👈

HEYYY thank you so much! it went really well and the pain is super minimal rn, i can even sit up on my desk! which was recommended by my surgeon to do anyway so thats rad

ANYWAYSSSSS... THANK YOU for the kind words im so glad you like it!! and THANK YOU for reminding me of the fact i never posted about my robot au like i had meant to 💀

here it is NOW (and to anyone who hasnt seen the art here it be)

this is long as hell btw. so sorry

SO. setting i imagine is similar to typical vat7k BUT a little darker and more dystopian. think steampunk industrial stuff... which i know hugo's kingdom is already like lol but just imagine it like. in a lot more places. this is basically a "steampunk" au too

robots are VERY common. invented by a group of scientists with the main ones being donella and ulla

robots are used as service etc etc. theyre not sentient at all so this isnt like. some unethical practice

but ulla and donella are OBSESSED with making them more and more advanced, theyre besties and all that. but ulla is Particularly obsessed with making the Perfect Robot

we know that ulla is kind of messed up in the head. in this au she kind of messes way too much with robot sentience WHILE ALSO getting obsessed with the eternal library. same stuff happens eventually. donella and ulla fight about the eternal library etc etc

BUT ALSO... ulla is working on her Magnum Opus. a son for her and her husband, who she is making to be the perfect robot. quirin is unaware of the shit shes doing and fully trusts her and supports this passion project

and well! she does make the first Sentient Robot. with the use of science and Magical Knowledge she was able to basically give life force through magical means into the robot. The robot of course she named varian. and not only is he sentient, but he looks completely human

she did some messed up stuff tho! again! she's programmed him with fake memories so he thinks he has lived a life fully as a human. he's also programmed to not notice things like the small seams on his body and all that. like his code just immediately disregards all that

anywaysss. after ulla disappears, quirin is dedicated to taking care of varian. he figures it's best to follow with ulla's choice of making sure varian doesnt know hes a robot

MEANWHILE ! because of the schism between ulla and donella, there was some wack shit that happened. namely robots going completely crazy. now all robots are Murder Robots. so the world is pretty Dystopian at the moment

Varian decides he wants to go out and find the source of what made the robots go crazy. bc this sucks lol. like everyone is Just Miserable

so he meets his friends. nuru, yong, hugo!

LETS TALK ABOUT HUGO

hugo works for donella. hugo also absolutely HATES robots. the robots have been messing shit up since he was a kiddo

he's kind of like a robot hunter. harvesting them for parts as well as getting rid of them bc theyre dangerous. usually donella directs him to different missions. and now shes telling him to join this guy (varian) bc she wants the secrets that ulla had hidden and varian is sure as hell after them

sooooo at one point. varian gets hurt maybe, or interacts with something that breaks the code in him or whatever. the code that stops him from noticing his robotic qualities. i think he probably would get super injured and like. he and all his friends stare in shock and horror as some sort of gash or sparks or whatever show a metallic inside

they all find out he's a robot together weeeee. no one is having a good time

so he's living with existential crisis. he's away from his dad so he cant travel all the way back to be like hey What The Fuck. AND he's still dedicated to his goal. but now he's just. confused, scared, and unsure if he's worthy of his humanity that he thought he had

they all try to work with this new discovery (which i think would happen earlier on rather than way later). hugo especially is like. having a crisis. bc he's always hated robots and for good reason. but varian... varian is SO human. he thinks, he feels, he cares, etc. he's more Human than a lot of the Flesh and Blood people he's been around

so you know, hugo starts to fall in love with him anyway. lots of excellent scenes of him helping varian with his mechanics, etc

and of course varian starts falling in love with him too, but is dealing with a lot of confusion as well. like is he even real, doesnt hugo deserve to be loved by a Human and not a Robot, etc etc

ok jesus christ. i think thats all the main stuff. woaghghg

[neptuniadoesstuff]

The King of Beauty & Violence, Adder himself!

(Yes he can keel you but doesn't want to bcs welp, he's lazy & a germiphobe)

& this is his Sigil.

So uh... Who da hecc is Adder? Welp Adder was a God OC I made for @stridesthroughashes on screb for their birfday. (But they were on a different acc during that time BUT WE DONT TALK ABOUT THAT-)

So uh... hab some info of him that I made up (with some extra stuff):

|| Name: Adder'Synn Malkovich or Adder | Nickname: King of Beauty & Violence | Gender: Male (Trans), He/Him | Personality: Narcissist & sadistic, has major anger problems & very lazy + is tired 24/7 | Pride: Gay | Height: ?? Ft tall | Species: Bloopmo/Human Hybrid (Formally), Primal God | Family: Tan'Tell (Adopted son) | Powers: Can turn into huge snek man when very angy ||

Now imma tell you his likes/dislikes.

Likes/Loves:

Wine (Dood's a wine addict-)

Charcuterie Boards

Prob hoomon flesh-

Fancy poultry

Nuts

Gold Possbly

Getting drunk & not doing anything

Hot men

His Overseer Isma (Isma is a OC of mine)

Ppl dying in his arena

Being a menace in the parties in GodHome in general

Dislikes/Hates:

Snails

Hugo & his Overseer, Peter

Paying bills

Gwin (Yeh I sorta made up a Roommate AU where these 2 lived with each other but Gwin keeps eating his frikin walls)

"Ugly Ppl"

Getting dirty

Vallah & the other Gods that exist in GodHome.

Rlly doing any task that is necessary. (Dood never sleeps)

Being told what to do by others

Slight Origin Story?

Adder was originally just a college student in a rich family, despite this he wasnt rlly.. stable.. Always attacking others when being told what to do thus is often was called a spoiled brat by the other students in the campus. He did have one friend though, his was Hugo, a boy who he knew since childhood.

But then... a certain incident to happen... While one day, there was a campus party & smtn just snapped in Adder, this of course was from the pressure of his father who rlly gave no friks for him at all.. Adder to RAMPAGE & kill any known target that was "in his way" but then he was shot.. by Hugo? His friend! But why? Bcs of what Adder did what was the thing that trigger Hugo to kill him...

Adder was then reborn as a Sinner in Wrath, despite being the first level it was very much a warzone there, despite that he actually enjoyed killing ppl... As it was a way he can FINALLY take out HIS ANGER on the ones who wronged him.. Maybe is that what Mom wanted?

Years later he rose up the ranks, essentially becoming a tyrant till he went into the rank... of a God, who needed to be redeemed when you're now a God? He didn't, and he now had what HE wanted... To be in control.. No more being told what to do by some puny mortals or "peasants". His kingdom grew extensively, becoming bigger & bigger. But since it "was" still TECHNICALLY a part of Wrath, he took some of its culture & gave it his own twist..

And this is how Adder came to be! (And yeh I kinda changed his origins a bit bcs him dying in Highskool felt weird & I feel very iffy with that tbh)

Thats all I have for him.

Name: King of Beauty & Violence Ref Sheet

Character: Adder'Synn Malkovich ( @stridesthroughashes )

Artist: ME

Program: IbisPaint x

Bubs' TOS: Plz don't repost/steal, trace, or recolor my art WITHOUT MY PERMISSION! If you do, I'll take yur femur and pelvis.. SO, DON'T THINK ABOUT IT! (The PNS on my Blog's pinned project clearly means "Please No Steal" plz follow that rule.) If you do post my art on anything like yur blog or somewhere else (With my permission) PEASE CREDIT ME!

[atomicdela-au]

Alrighty we back again bois

It is time for talking about the TMC characters, and what their roles are within this AU. I’m gonna give a brief description of each character is at right now for their development. I’m not going to go within detail about the characters backstories because that would make this post WAY too long lol

(Note all of these characters are going to be in alphabetical order)

Adam Murray

Probably my favorite character that I am having the most fun writing for within this AU. Not because that Adam is my favorite character from TMC originally (Yeah, I know everyone hates him Lmao) but his story that I came up for him was an interesting take on his character.

In the first act of the AU he isn’t so much a major character, but rather of a bridge between both acts. Adam is more of a major character within the second act of the AU.

Archangel Gabriel

Within this AU there is a plot between the alternates we know and love. To put it in simple terms, there is this build up plot of during the years after the bombs had dropped, the USDOTP (Known as the United States Of Temporal Phenomenon) have been trying to build themselves back together after the attack/war that had occurred.

Throughout the story, especially second act there are mention of rumors that the department was undergoing some tests or experiments with a new type of creature or monster that had emitted from the radiation. And these creatures are known as the alternates.

The rumors that people have been spreading across the wastes had to do with the fact that the department was subjecting humans with extracted alternate DNA (Yeah I know, it’s weird but bare with me) because it was known that alternates are tough to kill. Perhaps you can even call them immortal.

And I know that I am spoiling one of if not the biggest twist of the story but those rumors turn out to be true.

But what does this have to do with Archangel Gabriel? Well with this AU, Gabriel is not the embodiment of Satan like he is originally in TMC.

Gabriel was one of the first humans to be conducted underneath this test. And before he was experimented his human name was Gabriel Jackson.

(I know I said that I wasn’t going to do any backstory talk but I had to give context as to why Archangel Gabriel was referred to Gabriel Jackson in this AU.)

Cesar Torres

Cesar is definitely one of the major characters in the first act. But he is not a major character in the second. He is a supporting character to Mark Heathcliff.

More on him later with the backstory post that I eventually do.

David Lee (Or Dave Lee)

David is not much of a major character in act one, but certainly is in act two. It is due to the fact of with his association with MandelaTECH in this AU. Along with his work with work with Thatcher. Can’t really say much else than this, I did not really develop him so much yet.

Evelin Miller

Like Dave, Evelin is in the same boat. Her only development of right now is just the “Girlfriend Role” but soon enough I’ll get around to developing more stuff for her.

6/Intruder (Also known as Hugo Zamora)

Just like Gabriel, 6 or known famously as the Intruder also underwent the same experiment by the USDOTP. He was the sixth person to undergo this test (haha see why I put him as the sixth one?).

Also ALSO like Gabriel, I gave the Intruder a human name, which is Hugo Zamora. (I know it’s a weird name but I think it’s interesting)

As for his role, Hugo is a minor character in the first act but more of a major role in the second act. This is due to his affiliation with Adam Murray.

Jonah Marshall

Like Adam, Jonah is a major character in the second arc of the story. In this AU he shares a backstory with Adam too, and I really like how I have built their dynamic so far for both of them.

Like Cesar, he is a supporting role.

Jonny (The Cat)

Yes, this is the fucking cat Jonny.

All I have for him so far is that somewhere in the second act, Adam adopts a cat and names him…well Jonny.

Jude Murray

Ah yes, Jude Murray. Also known as Adam’s Father. He briefly appears in the first arc, but not isn’t a major character in the second arc. I can’t say much about him either yet, since again I’m leaving

Lynn Murray

Like Jude, Lynn appears briefly in the first arc, but isn’t major in the second. But she is mentioned by Adam in the second arc. After all, it is Adam’s mother.

Mark Heathcliff

Good old Mark Heathcliff is a MAJOR character in the first part of the AU. He is the center character. Not only is he a central character in the first arc, but he is also a major character in the second arc as well, which is neat.

Mervin Marshall

I know Mervin is a joke character but fuck it. I don’t care what anyone says lol

Mervin has the last name Marshall, which I like to head cannon that he is related to Jonah Marshall in someway. So that deems Mervin to be Jonah’s father in this AU. So far what I got planned for him is that he is a major character in the second arc due to his relation to Jonah.

But I had the idea of Mervin also making an appearance in the first part too.

N (The Alternate)

Ah yes, another well known alternate, N.

Just like Gabriel and the Intruder (Or Hugo) I gave the same thing to N. His human name was Ethan Sutton, but once he was injected with the alternate DNA he was given the alternate name of N, but was given another name named Nemesis.

After Gabriel he was the second one to undergo the experiments.

Ruth Weaver

Ruth Weaver is a supporting role in the first part, due to her affiliation with Thatcher Davis. But she is not a big role in the second part.

Sarah Heathcliff

Sarah definitely is a supporting character in the first arc but then picks up her character in the second arc because of the relation with her brother Mark and of course Adam and Jonah.

Stanley (Or Stanley Zamora)

I know that Stanley is the same person as the Intruder, but hear me out. There is a story dynamic that I am sticking with for this AU. I thought to make Stanley and Hugo (The Intruder in this AU) as twin brothers. Both of the brothers underwent the same experimentations.

Although Hugo was the sixth person to be experimented, Stanley was the Fourth. More on their backstory later when I get around to post more about the characters.

Thatcher Davis

Like Ruth, Thatcher appears in the first part briefly. But the difference is that he becomes more of a major character in the second half. More on him later too.

The Preacher

The Preacher (Or her Human name in this AU is Amelia Phillips) also underwent the experimentations. She went after Gabriel and N, making her the third person.

Like a bunch of other characters I do not have much to say about her either until I talk about backstory.

Other Characters (Mostly fan-made to help the story along):

James Heathcliff

James Heathcliff Mark and Sarah’s father in this AU.

Michelle Heathcliff

Michelle Heathcliff Mark and Sarah’s mother in this AU.

Kimberly Marshall

Kimberly Marshall is Jonah’s mother in this AU.

Sebastian Torres

Sebastian Torres is the father of Cesar in this AU.

Milena Torres

Milena Torres is Cesar’s mother in this AU.

That’s about it for characters. I know, it’s pretty boring but soon enough I’ll make a post about their background lore is about soon (not sure when but I know it’s one of my priorities to post about.)

I know it’s sorta spoilers but oh what the hell. Who cares about spoilers.

Anyway thanks for taking the time to read this SUPER long post. See y’all in the next one.

[vanilladrizzlequeen]

Congratulations!! You’ve now followed a depressed and mentally unstable creature :D

What’s on here??

-some School for Good and Evil Stuff

-so much Avatar (and NOT THE BLUE PEOPLE THANK YOU VERY MUCH)

-some Star Stable Online

-occasional Wings of Fire

-the very rare Evelyn Hugo

-lots of Harley Quinn Show stuff (but less now that the season’s over)

-whatever random shit i think of next

but Anna why did you even make this blog with everything instead of side-blogs for different fandoms?

short answer? i’m lazy.

long answer? i’m really lazy.

what do you even do with your life then?

✨glad you asked✨

-i write (i don’t really post my writing though- lmk if y’all are interested?)

-i do lots of work (i’m a high school student so i’m fairly busy)

-i play violin, trumpet, and i sing

-i play field hockey and lacrosse

-i read SO. MUCH.

-way too much YouTube and Netflix

-i scroll through the wonderful chaos that is tumblr

now anna i hope you’re aware that nobody’s actually asking these questions but let’s continue the hallucinations! what do you like in each fandom?

yay i’m excited for this ALRIGHT

AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

-AZULA IFNWOAHRIENSHFOENS

-love her SO much

-maiko stan (for the few people that don’t know that’s Mai x Zuko)

-mixed opinions on azula redemption arc

-fanfic gremlin (i read so many in maiko or azula it’s not even funny) (yet i’ve only written one and it was a sad maiko one)

-yeah idk Azula i guess

-she’s mostly it tbh

-i mean other than maiko

WINGS OF FIRE

-Scarlet Scarlet and more Scarlet i love her so much

-don’t come at me but diehard Darksight shipper

-absolutely love the SandWing sisters (BLISTERRR)

-really just the badass female villains tbh

-also a sucker for royalty

-favorite artists you say? wellll go check them out!!! @meroaw @human-wof-designs @ookamimonster

SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL

-HESTADIL. ALL OF IT. FOREVER.

-go look at @petrichora-art the art they did of Hester and Anadil is WILD i love it (and i’m also the annoying creature that repeatedly requested it)

-look Hester and Anadil belong together i don’t make the rules

-favorite fics ever: @im-gay-and-mentally-unstable

-other favs: @simplybybea @tilda-rothery @spookystar29 @ambrsn

-read through the books it’s painfully obvious but SOMEONE refuses to actually write it canonically *cough cough SOMAN cough*

-Anadil by far my favorite character i love her so much aghhh

-and then Hester obviously

-hard Dovesso shipper

-i only accept Kerry Washington and Charlize Theron

-grandma dovey in the books is weird ok i like her character but not to ship with Lesso book-wise

-Sophie’s cool i suppose

-and Tedros is a Ken he just is

-he’s dumb af but i love him ok <3

-hort is a way of life

-hophie is shit i’m so sorry (i’m really not)

-tagatha’s fine i guess

STAR STABLE ONLINE

-i don’t actively post in ssoblr but i’ll pop in once and a while

-if you’re looking for an sso blog i absolutely recommend @jorvikwildhorse @everwindfields @juni-ravenhall @starbornsoulrider and some other people I’m definitely forgetting

-currently in Frost Valley I believe

-name is Hadley Truthstone, i’m probably on some really tall horse (or Nugget my Dartmoor)

HARLEY QUINN SHOW

-AGHHHHH

-i think Harley and Ivy are my spirit animals

-so i’ve watched each season several times…oops

-but honestly such a well done wlw couple i’m so happy

-only reason i didn’t say lesbian couple is cause i’m like 99% sure they’re both bi (Joker, Kiteman)

-Ivy is everything

-i have…opinions on s4

-they’re not all good

EVELYN HUGO

-honestly nothing to say here

-i mean fabulous book fabulous characters

-i’d die for Celia

-that’s about it really

And if you’ve somehow read this far…good job. here’s a cookie i guess 🍪

follow if you want. or don’t. i’m not forcing you (only secretly manipulating you behind the scenes until you accidentally find yourself clicking that follow button…just kidding. probably.)

good luck with whatever more productive things you’re doing with your life as i write this shitpost :’)

[shadowsong26fic]

Papa and J----, August ‘34 Update

Author: shadowsong26

Rating: PG/PG-13

Fandom: Les Misérables

Characters: Technically all on-page characters are OCs; Valjean, Cosette, Marius, and Javert are discussed as historical personalities. Backstory Cosette/Marius and heavily implied Valjean/Javert.

Warnings: Nothing specific, I don’t think?

Summary: Euphrasie Pontmercy–known in the art world as La Jardinière–isn’t exactly a household name. Still, the sheer length of her active career (her work was first displayed and sold in 1839, and she left one last work unfinished at her death in 1910) makes her interesting to people who actually study that century in art. But as far as the historical record is concerned, Jardinière seems to have sprung semi-fully-formed from the streets of Paris somewhere in the mid-to-late 1820s. Other than the fact that she was educated in a convent, essentially nothing is known about her parents or her childhood.

Until now.

Or:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a PhD student with no thesis topic must be in want of an undiscovered painting to go absolutely feral over.

Disclaimer: All characters are the property of their respective creators.

Notes: Chapter 2! Admittedly a little infodumpy, but let’s be real, would this really be a Victor Hugo fanfic if I didn’t have at least one?

Updates will be posted here on Thursdays and crossposted to AO3 on Fridays.

From: Wright, Ari To: McLean, Emma Thesis proposal Saturday, 1/24, 1:14 AM

Hi, Emma,

So, I may want to change direction. Pretty radically. Is it too late to do that?

Thanks!

Ari

-----

From: McLean, Emma To: Wright, Ari Re: Thesis proposal Monday, 1/26, 8:32 AM

That depends. How big a change are we talking?

Emma McLean, PhD Professor, 19th Century French Art

-----

From: Wright, Ari To: McLean, Emma Re: Thesis proposal Monday, 1/26, 9:54 AM

Well. Hypothetically. If I may have hypothetically found an early--mid-30s--Jardinière portrait. One of the subjects may or may not be identified as her father. That. Hypothetically.

Ari

-----

From: McLean, Emma To: Wright, Ari Re: Thesis proposal Monday, 1/26, 10:35 AM

Authentic? Show me the painting.

Emma McLean, PhD Professor, 19th Century French Art

-----

From: Wright, Ari To: McLean, Emma Re: Thesis proposal Monday, 1/26, 10:38 AM

See attached photos. Taken with my phone sorry about the quality. Inscription looks like her tho doesn’t it?

Ari

Sent from my iPhone

-----

From: McLean, Emma To: Wright, Ari Re: Thesis proposal Monday, 1/26, 10:45 AM

How soon can you get it here for authentication

Emma McLean, PhD Professor, 19th Century French Art

-----

From: Wright, Ari To: McLean, Emma Re: Thesis proposal Monday, 1/26, 10:47 AM

Owners are out of town, but expected back later today or tmrw, I’ll get in touch about borrowing it ASAP.

Sent from my iPhone

-----

From: McLean, Emma To: Wright, Ari Re: Thesis proposal Monday, 1/26, 11:02 AM

Do that. If it is what you think it is, absolutely. Write the thesis.

If you don’t, I will.

Emma McLean, PhD Professor, 19th Century French Art

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

I spent most of that weekend, while I was waiting for Emma--my thesis advisor--to get back to me, pulling together everything I had on hand about La Jardinière and figuring out my next steps. I don’t think I slept for like forty hours.

Unfortunately, what I had on hand wasn’t all that much. I’d done some basic research into her--like I told Phil, the fact that her career lasted as long as it did made her interesting to me. My focus had more been on the relationship between technology and art (and not just the basic stuff, like the advent of photography, but things like changes in travel and communications technology, in available pigments, and so on), but a painter with a seventy-year career, including most of the period I was interested in, was definitely at least worth looking into.

Still, it had only been a basic overview, not much more than you’d find on her Wikipedia page.

Well, actually, it kind of was more than you’d find on her wiki page, which is pretty sparse. Just covering the basics, noting that she: was born around 1815; died September 18, 1910; was married to Marius Pontmercy, a lawyer and sometime radical; and was the mother of Thierry Pontmercy, a pioneer in the field of forensic photography, along with his four less-famous siblings. Also the fact that her work was first displayed and sold in 1839, and her last piece (Souvenir--inachevé) was left unfinished at her death; although her popularity peaked in the early-mid 1850s, she continued to be reasonably well-respected as an artist throughout her life. The entry also lists a couple of her other better-known works. And that’s about it.

To be fair, that isn’t all that surprising. Because the truth is, Euphrasie Pontmercy--known professionally as La Jardinière, and apparently to her family as Mémé Cosette--isn’t exactly a household name. Even as far as mid-19th-century/pre-Impressionist painters go. Some of that comes down to the way art is studied, and the way the various art movements of her century worked. Some of it is that she wasn’t a major player in any of those movements. And probably general background misogyny plays a role.

There’s also the fact that there is next to no information available about her early life. As far as the historical record is concerned, Jardinière seems to have sprung semi-fully-formed from the streets of Paris somewhere in the mid-to-late 1820s. Other than the fact that she was educated in a convent, essentially nothing is known about her parents or her childhood.

Until now.

Maybe.

Assuming the painting checks out.

But I wanted to have all my ducks in a row, so to speak, before I talked to Phil’s parents about borrowing the painting (and in case I needed more support to sell Emma on the idea). So, compiling what information I had, and making a list of things I’d need to dig more into.

Jardinière spent, as far as current research can tell, her entire life and career in Paris, apart from the eighteen months she and her husband spent in Dover in the 1860s (most likely because his politics got them into trouble), and the approximately two months in the early 1850s she spent in Calais without him (reasons unknown).

Her work is mostly landscapes--several paintings of gardens, appropriately enough, as well as various parts of Paris; the seascapes from her Dover period are particularly beautiful, even if fashions in the art world had generally turned away from landscapes in that period. There are also a few portraits, some commissioned and some apparently just of ordinary people in her life; and a series of works she referred to as memories, depicting places or events she had lived in or witnessed years before actually sitting down to paint them.

Some of her sketchbooks also survive, including one from Calais that has several pages missing. Most of her paintings are marked on the back with the subject and a date (generally assumed to be the date she completed the work), like the one in Phil’s living room was.

If you line up her paintings chronologically, you can see her style shifting a little, drawing in bits and pieces from new movements and artistic fashions while still remaining recognizably hers. Especially when she comes back to locations she’d already painted years before--which she did repeatedly--showing the way both she and her city have grown and changed over time.

Even more interesting, while not all of her personal correspondence is available, there are a few surviving letters she exchanged with notable artists, particularly in the last few decades of her life. There’s one letter she wrote to Toulouse-Lautrec, which was briefly quoted in a biography of him I read a few years back.

I made a note to try and get my hands on the whole text of that letter, among others, if I was really planning to do a deep dive into Jardinière’s life and work--even if it was from fifty-some years after the painting at the center of all this. I’d also need to find someone who could help me translate it, and any other papers I managed to gain access to. My French is decent enough, and I’d probably be fine communicating with French institutions and archivists in order to request access to their collections, but for something this important, I’d want someone way more fluent to help with the actual documentary evidence.

Next was a list of museums that had some of her work on display or in their collections; there was also an exhibit in Marseille that I wanted to look into--not Jardinière’s work, but ‘Bertillon and Pontmercy: The Men and Minds of Early Forensic Photography’ might include some relevant things from her son’s life and papers. Given that I’d almost certainly end up flying to France anyway, it would be stupid to skip that.

So. I had a game plan, or at least the beginnings of one. Start by reaching out to various archives, here and in France, possibly England as well; look closer at her work where I can find it, particularly her early work and the few portraits that are available--although the fact that her poetically-named final work was currently included in a post-Impressionist exhibit in Chicago definitely caught my eye. And then go to France, to look for other documentary evidence. Try to identify Papa and J-----, and, assuming I manage to do that, write about it. Fill in the gaps in a story that might not be interesting to everyone, but for the people who were interested, it mattered a hell of a lot.

All of this, of course, rested on gaining access to Phil’s parents’ painting, and proving it really was an 1834 Jardinière.

Hopefully he was right, and his parents would be easy to get on board.

But I sure as hell had to try.

[wellntruly]

Our third & last Plane Post

Vol. IV: Saint-Denis: carry[-]on:

Book 7

Argot, argot! Only the French could be so horrified by, shudder, SLANG.

I remembered this one well, though still found several things to marvel at anew -

:: “The real human division is this: the luminous and the shady.” This means something else but man I love it meaning what I want. Sliding scale with “cutie-pie” on one side and “sneaky” on the other.

:: Had forgotten I once knew François Villon’s ‘Où sont les neiges d’antan?’/‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’ [Rossetti] was the medieval reference for one of the best things in literature, Yossarian’s “Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?” refrain in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22. Genius alert!

:: “il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ancient figure that partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of the lancers, and which compresses into a single word the popular expression: it rains halberds.”

Book 8

Some good stuff in here! For some reason the description of Marius and Cosette as “Two swans meeting on the Jungfrau” speaks to me. Captures their oddballness somehow. I also am curiously riveted by the side plot, or not even side plot, just occasional reference to the cholera epidemic that is sweeping Paris this month, but which never affects any of our characters. World-building? I guess? I like it so much! It’s so jarring and grim each time!

I also like much the image of Marius sneaking out of Courfeyrac’s room every night from about midnight to one o’clock in the morning. Bahorel is like: definitely shady.

“[Courfeyrac] was not much in the habit of concealed passions; it made him impatient, and now and then he called upon Marius to come back to reality. One morning, he threw him this admonition: ‘My dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located in the moon, the realm of dreams, the province of illusions, capital, soap bubble. Come, be a good boy, what’s her name?’” Mon dieu.

Me, reading on June 2nd: “The following day was the 3rd of June, 1832" Me: I did it

Eponine Corner: She’s crushing it: “She had set her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and she swung her foot with an air of indifference. Her tattered gown permitted a view of her thin shoulder blades. The neighboring street lantern illuminated her profile and her attitude.”

And finally, this book closes out with a goofy and ultimately amazing bit where suddenly in M. Gillenormand’s narration, just FOUR years have passed since Marius left. He personally calls him “one and twenty” twice, and I’m quietly losing it assuming Victor Hugo has just lost track of his own timeline. And then WITHOUT ANY OTHER COMMENTARY ON THIS, not even an “Actually,” Marius states it to have been five years since he departed his grandfather's. The character has just forgotten how much time has passed and the narration honored his POV by matching it. This is such a weird wonderful writing move, lord.

Book 9

Eponine, now in drag in “a gray blouse and trousers of dust-colored cotton velvet,” stealth drops a note on Jean Valjean’s head that just says “MOVE AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE.” Incredible how she has gone from a slightly grating introduction to becoming the best fucking character.

Book 10

---something I fear I cannot say for my feelings on Gavroche, unfortunately. I feel so bad for being annoyed and tired by Gavroche, but...I am annoyed and tired by Gavroche. The only Gavroche I’ve liked, and a good deal, is the ragged bitter tween in the original 1980 French concept album. Now that’s a Gavroche I can get into.

Anyway, speaking of albums, we are really entering ‘Do You Hear the People Sing’ territory now. The *Pivot* Approaches..!

Vol. IV, Books 7-10 ✓✓✓✓

[Brickolage]

[araisbored]

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982

I was in the middle of writing the Seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo review when I realized I needed to actually write a review about something that I recently read. The bulk of books I ordered from the Philippines finally came.One of those books is this book. Which I’ve been wanting to read for a long time. 

(Side note: Look at all the book covers for different countries. It’s cute. I love how in most of the covers, the face of the woman was empty because it signifies all woman. That this could be any woman you know. Did you get it or am I just over analyzing stuff.)

According to my GoodReads review: (which has become really helpful in the past couple of reviews.) (See my Seven Husband of Evelyn Hugo review. If not posted, well you wouldn’t get the joke. I’m sorry. This was meant to take with sarcasm).

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo My rating: 3 of 5 stars The rating is not final. Might change it when I get to ponder more.

Well, based on that I need to ponder more. Well, did I ponder enough? Let’s see.

I wish this book gave me something to gasp or to root for but, no. It somehow surprised me, but then I didn't as the accounts in the book were the same things I experienced every day. So when the plot factor was removed, there was nothing left to judge but the writing of the story. Which was very weak, it was very appealing for sure (the concept), as for It went viral in Korea. And it started a movement there. But there is not much of a story there. It's more like a short story for a documentary series. Or a short segment that you'll read in a magazine. The author can remove the names and replace it with 'father', 'mother', 'woman' and the story would be easier to read but wouldn't have more color. It would be the same.

These days I just wish people would write more about a woman who isn't smashed by patriarchy, or capitalism. I wish people, despite being trampled on, would write how we all can get out of this slump. Something inspiring. Not something that will annoy me and just remind me how fucking unfair things for women. But I guess it's understandable when hope is hard to find these days. We need something. And when these MEN are still in power. We still need these kinds of books. (?)

I wished that maybe since it was given this much attention, I hoped that the issues this book was trying to raise were explained or dive into further. Because what this book gave (to me) was just scratching the surface. In the times where everyone was trying to be aware or already is. I just expect this to have a stronger approach.

In terms of writing, I also yearned for it to be more appealing. Because as much as I wanted to stand against all the injustices for women. The writing phase was terrible. I did consider that maybe I felt this way because this was a Korean book. And it’s really hard to understand something if it wasn’t your mother tongue. Some messages won’t translate well. On the other hand, I don’t want to blame the translator because we’re all just doing our job here. So I don’t really have anything to say for this book anymore. 

The ending doesn’t make sense to me as well because apparently this was written through the accounts of Jiyoung’s therapist. Which is unethical. I know that this is a work of fiction but when you are trying to write a book based on true events, wouldn’t you want the accounts to be straight with the actual in-real life facts? I’m just saying.

I heard there’s a movie adaptation of it which maybe this book was trying to do. To get an adaptation. Which leads back again to what I’m saying. That maybe this book should try harder, just like any other woman. Oh wow, the metaphor there. 

[bi-lullaby]

Tag game <3

Tagged by @lovedwinchesters (thanks, Jordan!)

Rules: Answer the questions and tag 20 a few blogs you are contractually obligated to get to know better!

Name: Mar 

Star sign: Capricorn 

Height: 1.64m/5′4 

Time: 17:02 

Birthday: December 27 

Favorite bands/artists: Not a music person, sadly

Last movie: My bloody valentine

Last show: The Boys

When did I create this blog: 2017? Maybe? But I was on tumblr for years beforehand lol

What I post: So much stuff, a whole box of chocolates and all that. Some MCU (older content specially), some HP, some miscelaneous

Last thing I googled: My college's admin system lol

Other blogs: @deanwinchester-baby which is my pretty-much-exclusively-supernatural (some general Jensen/sometimes other spn cast as well) and @readyornot-hereicome because I needed a place to dump my random Harry Potter next generation edits and headcanons but it's pretty inactive

Do I get asks?: Rarely but each is deeply appreciated!

Following: 128 on this blog, 22 on the SPN one and 22 on the HP one

Average hours of sleep: I'd say about 6/6 and a half hours a day

Instruments: Nope, no coordination + exactly zero musical ability

What I'm wearing: A soft stay-at-home dress

Dream job: Surgeon

Dream trip: I have no idea why but I've always wanted to travel to China and England since I was a small kid,.

Nationality: Brazilian

Favorite songs: Eduardo & Monica by Legião Urbana

Last book I’ve read: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Top 3 fictional universes I’d like to live in: Harry Potter (fuck JKR tho, feel the need to say this), She-Ra (maybe not the smartest pick but Magic! The aesthetic! Friendship!), and Supernatural (which is an objectively bad option but idc I just wanna meet dean) (copying your last answer because yes). 

Tagging: @vampyrekat @densi-obsessed @cowboylikedean @magston-obsessed @yesimalittlestitious @asexualsartemis @saveyoua-seat and anyone who wants to do it!

[tea-and-finalfantasy]

been watching markiplier, etc. as background noise, as stuff to watch when i’m not feeling good physically or mentally

and one vid i watched (“watched” as in it’s horror so i just listen to it lol)--at dead of night--has a lot of characters that are morally grey and stuff like that

and the premise is there’s this guy named jimmy (evil alter ego named hugo) who does all these horrible things but we later find out it’s bc he’s literally being possessed by the ghost of his abusive father (or the ghost of like a centuries long abuse cycle situation?)

and while the morally grey characters who were slandered and murdered by jimmy (hugo) in the past are still justified imo? bc they’re being injured and threatened by someone, they just don’t know it’s bc he’s possessed? some youtube comments were a bit funny to me (like genuinely kinda funny to read)

*game content mentions an accusation of sexual assault, murder, harm to animals, etc. and my post mentions sexual assault, medical malpractice, some outdated terms or ableist language BUT the last two paragraphs are generally free from that/highlight what’s interesting to me abt the youtube comments if u wanna skip the text

one dude (harvey) was really violent towards jimmy and threatened him with a gun (not with the intention to shoot, just to scare him out of the hotel) but that was after jimmy almost killed him by electrocution, shot a crossbow bolt through his leg, etc so like. yeah he was violent but after jimmy was violent towards him

i do not fault him for choosing violence or reacting that way. some people were weird abt him and were like “oh but he’s being violent too!” but like. yeah?? i would be if all this shit was happening plus other guest deaths due to jimmy??

but when it comes to dr. bose like. i get being wary of his character because drs can exert control over their patients. i get wanting to look more into jimmy’s accusation of sexual assault. but not only was the scrapbook of news articles mentioned about both accusations (that he was being beaten and that he was being assaulted), meaning both accusations seemed to be word-for-word what was in the newspapers,

when harvey confronted jimmy about making up that story about dr. bose beating him with a paddle to take the medicine AND THEN that he molested him, jimmy’s response was to laugh? so like. if we wanna be skeptical of harvey bc he already doesn’t like jimmy then ok but i dunno, jimmy’s response didn’t seem in line with the kind of response someone would have if they were telling the truth

BUT ALSO in regards to how drs work--

this is in a time period where force was regularly exerted on patients and he never did so in the way that we’d expect--and tbh force is still regularly exerted on patients? it never went away, it just changed in some aspects?

people still restrain patients, forcefully medicate them etc. so while i get being skeeved out by dr. bose chasing jimmy around with a syringe and (rightfully) being of the opinion that you can’t force meds on a patient (which i don’t think dr. bose did? he tried to enforce it in a strange way but might not’ve even administered it?)--

i feel like that’s when you’d be like. ok can some other character call the police. can dr. bose call other doctors in here for a second opinion LIKE my issue wouldn’t entirely be with his methods bc he never resorted to the kind of force we usually see for this time period?

like yeah i’d think chasing someone around a hotel w a syringe is bad, even if he didn’t go further w it, but ppl aren’t really mentioning that part so like? we’re not even neutral on this man for the right reason???

but i think for me, the funny comment was abt ppl going “um diazepam is a sedative, it’s not made for what dr. bose assumed was jimmy’s condition, it wasn’t the right drug, he must’ve been trying to sedate him to assault him--” and i’m like. babes.

tell me you’ve never gone to the doctor IN MODERN DAY NO LESS with symptoms and had them say smtn to the effect of huh that’s weird?? try this i guess?

like not only can drs not necessarily prescribe the correct thing all the time--

ex. a past dr who sort of listened to my issues, prescribed me a med, the med worked for some symptoms but gave me such an increase in anxiety that we had to stop--but we didn’t try anything else which was the weird part

yeah she wasn’t great in the first place BUT i wasn’t sure if i had adhd? and she was maybe treating me for depression or anxiety? and then the anxiety got worse and we just dropped it, rather than seeking out answers as to what actually was happening?? 

so like i got a med, don’t remember what we were trying to treat, it sort of worked in a way and didn’t in another, ??? like drs don’t necessarily get it right every time--

but sometimes u get prescribed stuff bc they don’t know what you need or because it might actually work for something not listed

yeah diazepam is listed as an anti-seizure med and/or an anxiety med but who knows if dr. bose thought an anxiety med would help--even if only we know as the viewers that jimmy actually has anxiety/depression and it’s ghost related/dr. bose doesn’t necessarily know or expect that. just bc it lists anti-seizure doesn’t mean he’s giving him a random med

i take clonazepam for anxiety--specifically severe agoraphobia at one point--and it’s listed as an anti-seizure med and an anxiety med. not only does it not specifically mention agoraphobia (although it solved that issue in a way my everyday anxiety med doesn’t, despite it also being an anxiety med), just bc it says it’s for seizures doesn’t mean that’s what i’m taking it for

plus like, only we know narratively that these issues are being caused by a haunting/possession. no med would be likely to work anyways but i can’t blame dr. bose for being like let’s try a sedative at the moment to see if that stops him from putting glass in ppls sandwiches and killing animals and harming other guests while we figure out the root of his issue and try and prescribe something else later

it feels like the difference between “let’s try this for the moment to see if it eases certain behaviors” (okay, open to changing meds, not a permanent decision) versus like “we gotta sedate this kid” (not okay, implies the patient is like. “lol fucked up,” not likely to be taken back and switched for something else)

PLUS, given the time period, even dr. bose with the best intentions is probably reliant on sedatives for patients. like i don’t want to imply that’s all they have without prior research but it’s like the long lists of why ppl were in asylums and it ranges from like. incorrectly diagnosed issues/outdated terms for actual problems to like. she acts inappropriately

and that still happens! my sister went to an outpatient place once and they

A. gave her meds without telling her the risks/side-effects (for example, if u miss a dose YOU CANNOT TAKE THE SAME DOSE THE NEXT DAY U HAVE TO START FROM THE LOWEST DOSE) + seemed to just? give her meds???

B. grouped literally anyone in there and did not give specialized care to anyone. it literally was like. here are people who are having very different issues that cannot benefit from this bc it’s just? not catering to anyone’s specific problems? you had someone who was forced to get an abortion, someone who had anger issues, someone like my sister who was having mental health issues due to ppl ignoring her physical health issues

like i’m not suprised that for the time period in the game, a doctor, even with the best intentions, would immediately prescribe a sedative. that doesn’t implicate dr. bose in anything else and while it’s definitely an issue with the time period, i don’t think we can blame him in particular for that + he does seem to genuinely try to help jimmy and i don’t think a lot of the

and like in no way are any of these yt comments ableist, it’s not that serious, but it is funny to me as someone who’s like yeah sometimes u trial meds, sometimes something could work although it’s not specifically for that thing, a lot of the time, without specialist intervention, u just test stuff out and hope it works or names what’s not being resolved, at worst ppl prescribe things too generally and medical services can be extremely abusive, which isn’t even necessarily showcased in the game--

like what do u mean ur surprised that got prescribed or that u assume it’s for SA reasons not like. The Med Of The Time/over-reliance on sedatives in general or bc medicine as a practice is like damn that’s weird, try this i guess

like what do u mean ur not aware this is how it is lol

[innuendostudios]

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident “feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

[1ddiscourseoftheday]

Thurs 25 Feb ‘21

Well well, look at Eleanor, making her way up out of the tags and all the way into the main post today, by which I mean ELEANORCALDER not ELEANORJ92! That’s right- she changed her insta name, holy shit! Why do I care, you ask? Because it NO LONGER MATCHES WITH LOUIS! It probably only means she’s moving forward with her influencer stuff, something that’s been in the works for a while with her having an increased presence and new(er) contract, and very recently with more presence on various other accounts and connections to brand accounts and a work trip that involved enough backstage changes to her account to result in a brief shadowban- but the fact that she did the very thing people have been clamoring for Louis to do for years AND has literally rebranded her account to be for something other than an adjunct to Louis’ presence is INTERESTING INDEED. I am LOOKING, and don’t think I didn’t see that stuffed bear in people clothes she posted today….

New Liam content is up in the form of some Hugo Man fragrance stuff-- the new ad materials ask “I am Hugo… AND WHAT ARE YOU?” like a more confrontational (but less existentially distressing) version of Do You Know Who You Are and suggest that everyone Go Your Own Way (like a less poppy Fleetwood Mac). The (translated) article out today tells us that the perfume “gives you many options, maybe it will close some doors, but open a few others,” okay, getting more existential and weird now but have no fear; the scent “automatically awakens the necessary self-confidence in each man.” ANYWAY there are cute new pictures of Liam in his Hugo collection clothes and a video (filmed quite a while back I believe) of him gamely chatting about the brand collab- there’s nothing like watching a man with anxiety issues trying to convince the interviewer he just loves taking risks but he does a good job of fielding the questions and gives us a classic Liam gem, “I think I embody the idea of living in the moment because I never usually know what the hell is going on until just before it happens,” plus a comment on his solo material I know people will find interesting: “I feel like I’m starting to get a little more freedom in what I do”.

Niall responded to a suggestion that he should be the next James Bond-- “had a missed call earlier, could have been them,” and Ryan Tedder posted a pic of his water bottle (I know it’s his cause it has a sticky note on it that says “NIALL”),  confirming that Niall owns YET ANOTHER different color of hydroflask (or he did, Ryan does caption it “never giving this back”) in addition to his apocalypse bunker stash of canned water cases in his garage like wow. Can people please stop pestering stars about hydrating! Look what you’ve DONE to this man, he’s obsessed!

Well everyone loves lots of water I guess: the Falling music video has been nominated for a production design award (Art Director’s Guild). It’s up against the Cardigan video, you gotta give them props for consistency! I guess they know what they like; pianos with water coming out of them! And Zayn’s NIL comic updated- today’s new panel (set to Unf*ckwitable) doesn’t offer any drastic advancement to the plot, but it does offer the cool sight of the two Zayns confronting one another.

[janiedean]

Hey, I've seen ur Italian Literature recoms. and it's really helpful. Do you, by any chance, read French Literature too? If so, can you suggest some?

hi anon, sorry for the lateness but I'm going to give this a crack - ofc for obvious reasons as in I'm italian and not french I'm entirely less familiar with french lit that you'd study in school than with italian ones and my knowledge of contemporary french lit is subzero so I can only help you with classics but

I'm going to go straight for it and start with the 19th century novelists for reasons sorry if I go like not in chronological order but

as alexandre dumas wrote my second-favorite book in existence (the three musketeers) and is also one of my favorite writers ever I'll recommend you the d'artagnan romances (musketeers, twenty years later and the viscount of bragelonne) which are long but are all very easy to go through - honest the best thing with dumas is that while he's everything but synthetic you don't feel it, do start with musketeers because it's honestly out of this world good

also honest dumas hasn't written a book that's not entertaining but do read the count of montecristo you really really do want to it's amazing and my second-fave of his after the aforementioned d'artagnan books

talking about 19th century novelists... I mean you really wanna read victor hugo, mind that you have to be in the mood for it because most of his stuff is heavy/long but it's also incredibly well-written and you breeze through it if you vibe with it - maybe you can start with his theater and in that case anything is good though I'm partial to le roi s'amuse for obv reasons (as in they got rigoletto from that plot xD), but wrt novels I'd go with notre dame de paris, les miserables and the man who laughs first, starting with notre-dame because it's shorter and you get a better idea, but my friend les mis is just... I mean I honestly think if you don't read that book you miss out on some of the most amazing literature that ever was so there's that

and going back to another of my fave books ever, do try stendhal - my favorite is the red and the black which has honestly the most delicious terrible amoral protagonist ever and I just really love it, but the charterhouse of parma is also p. great

discussing the other heavyweights of 19th century french novels I personally did enjoy what zola I read more than I enjoyed what balzac I read but I also have no idea what's translated in english or not since not all of them didn't get translated in italian anyway but like if you want to give it a go wrt what you can expect from it with zola I'd go with therese raquin and with balzac either eugenie grandet or lost illusions (?? idk the english title)

meanwhile moving wrt flaubert you really wanna read madame bovary

also alexandre dumas's son - who has the same name as the father so you'll find him as alexandre dumas fils - has the dame of the camelias/la dame aux camelias which is where they took la traviata from and T__T I love iittt

and to finish with 19th century people, you want to try out maupassant too - any short story collection will do you good I think but if you want to try novels I'd go for bel ami

that is to say I haven't touched 19th century genre fiction but I mean... jules verne is a classic™, try out around the world in 80 days, journey to the center of the earth and 20000 leagues under the sea first and then if you like them you'll probably enjoy everything else

talking about classics, another one of my favorite books ever™ is laclos's dangerous liasons which is previous century but like... go for it

for more modern novels I do like a lot radiguet's the devil in the flesh and camus's the plague, there's other stuff I've meant to check for a while especially genre but I haven't gotten around to it yet :(

aaand I mean.... if you're very daring and you're into it I mean I feel bad leaving marcel proust out of a post about classic french literature recs because like in search of lost time is a... founding thing in french literature but like it's the kind of thing that you should read a) when you have a lot of time b) when you're in the mood c) when you're already familiar with most of ^^^^ the above stuff because otherwise it would just go over one's head and it's like seven books so I'm mentioning it because I have to and it's a great book but like if you aren't familiar with previous french literature I'd advise starting from something easier XD

now that was what I can give you for the novels but for everything else:

theater wise you're good with anything by moliere - any play of his is good, I can give you tartuffe, don juan, the miser and the misanthrope to have a few titles but most of his stuff is good

voltaire's work is in general a+ from philosophy to anything else and he's also very accessible, I'd start with candide if you want one thing

if you want to try more philosophers montaigne's essays are great, pretty accessible and have influenced also english writers and so on so he's the one I'd go for

(do not for the love of yourself ever read rousseau DON'T DO IT ANON DON'T DO IT THIS IS AN ANTI-REC)

wrt poetry I mean... if you want to go back to medieval times you can have a knock out of the chanson de roland for like EPIC POEM TIMES - I enjoyed studying it in high school admittedly but I guess it's not fundamental™ unless that's what you're interested in but as half of the few poets I actually do like are french...

my favorite of them is paul verlaine - I checked wiki and in english you can find not all of them but like do try fetes galantes, songs without words and poems under saturn, then there's charles baudeleaire for which you can get les fleurs du mal (I SHOULD hope there's a decent english translation around at least), and then arthur rimbaud, personally I just got a book with his full works and it worked great for me but for specific ones, a season in hell is his most famous, and like I have no idea if they translated verlaine's les poets maudits into english but it could be a good start for that whole branch of poetry

aaand I mean... that's what I feel comfortable recommending but if any of my french followers/french speaking followers who know more about this than me would like to chime in do feel free to! :D I might tag someone in the comments when my brain like starts working because I've been copying notes for the entire afternoon while writing this and I'm braindead but if any of you finds it before I tag you really go ahead XD

[elisabeth515]

Crypt Time

So like, during my Panthéon visit I went to see other cool people in the crypt as well and I’m just going to post about them after posting one about Lannes. I must say that Lannes is ✨privileged✨ considering that he has his own room (crypt) comparing to everyone else, and it is not likely that he would be shared with someone else. (To be fair, I still feel bad about him being stuck in a dark space, he would have loved Montparnasse Cemetery more, where his heart is buried in)

Without further ado, let me introduce the bois and girlbosses✨

After walking pass Rousseau and Voltaire, our girlboss Joséphine Baker, great artist, activist and WWII French Resistance fighter, is the first one that I paid my respects at. It is only the soil that is inside the sarcophagus, just like the one that contains Geneviève de Gaulle (I did not take a pic of this :p).

Next we have the Curies, a big name in radioactive substances; they’re buried together peacefully

And then we have F L O O F

This is the crypt that inters the remains of Jean Moulin and André Malraux, both fighters of the Resistance (with 2 more cool French guys at the other side of this crypt, whom I have forgotten the names). It was closed but you can still take pictures from outside. You know this is Malraux when there’s a cat beside his grave, because he is the crazy cat man. Somehow I wondered if Albert Camus were reinterred in the Panthéon (symbolically like Joséphine Baker), would he be put into this crypt as well… and I bet, if you think their spirits will stay there, this crypt is going to be very fun.

Anyways, let’s continue with Carnot, his grave has quite a lot of stuff on it.

And here is the crypt that inters the remains of 3 cool writers: Victor Hugo, Émile Zola and Alexandre Dumas (Sr.)

Hugo and Zola are facing each other, while Dumas is at the end. It looks like Dumas has been having fun babysitting the other 2.

Then here is the grave of Félix Éboué, a general (and later colonial governor) who fought for the free French forces in the colonies during WWII. He was an interesting figure ngl, thank you Black History Month for introducing me to him :3 (somehow it is always interesting to see people from the colonies raised to the top during colonial times tbh)

And that’s it! I went to the souvenir shop at the end to get some postcards then continue to hitchhike to Barcelona 😔

Look at our girlboss🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

Also like there’s an entire section of Le Petit Prince stuff since there is a monument of Saint-Exupery in the place. For those who are interested in French colonial history, there is a monument on Toussaint L’Ouverture at the entrance of the crypt that interred the remains of Éboué.

~~

By the way, starting from the last post, I am adding alternative texts into photos, hope you guys are fine with it!